Votive Art by Connla Freyjason featuring elements from Imramma and Art Life (coming soon). Imramma is available via clicking this image. (Link opens in new tab.)

In the last blog post of this series, we began to explore prayer as a method of reaching out to the ultimate–the sacred–in times of great need. Learning to trust and rely on Deity to get us through those tough times can be a bit more challenging than it might seem at first blush, however. Face it: part of the reason people fall into “faith ruts” in the first place is because they feel that God(s) has let them down in some way, in much the same way that other humans often let us down. You may, in fact, be sitting out there right now saying “why the hell should I trust and rely on Them, after that last crap they pulled in my life that got me to this point in the first place?”

One of the definitions of trust is actually hope. That may come as a bit of a surprise, but it’s right there at Merriam-Webster:

Trust: dependence on something future or contingent; HOPE

While we’re taking a look at definitions, let’s go ahead and take a look at rely as well:

Rely: to trust in or depend on.

If trust is synonymous with hope, then to rely may then be defined as:

Rely: to hope in or depend on.

Ultimately, a loss of hope is also a loss of trust, and without trust, we can’t rely on anyone or anything. Since we have previously defined faith as the “simple, pervading presence of hope“, it’s no wonder that a loss of hope leads to a loss of faith, and vice versa. It’s a vicious cycle, but it’s one that we’re presently striving to end. We end that cycle by learning to live without fear.

One of my all-time favorite quotes on the subject of fear appears in the Litany Against Fear, practiced by the Bene Gesserit Sisterhood in James Herbert’s Dune:

“I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

“Fear is the mind-killer.” This highlights the number one thing that fear does to us: it is crippling. Fear leads to stagnation; it stops the mind from working to its full capacity, and eventually, if left unchecked, can lead us to “stuckness”. We stop doing anything, because we come to fear everything. Instead of looking forward with glad expectancy, the fearful mind always looks forward with dread. Consequently, the person overcome with fear generally begins as a person preoccupied with worry; worry begins the downward spiral into full-fledged fear.

We began dealing with worry when working to find the God of Green Hope within each of us. Hopefully, it is an issue you have since been working on dealing with. Many of our worries in life are simple ones, easily handled by a simple change in perspective. But what about those worries that are simply too big for us to handle all by ourselves? This is where trusting and relying on God(s) comes in.

Have you ever been to one of those amusement park style haunted houses with a group of friends? If you have, it is likely that you are familiar with the concept of using one or more of those friends as a “human shield”: putting them between yourself and whatever was jumping out to frighten you. You may also recall “hiding behind Mommy” (or Daddy) as a child. Our trusting and relying on God(s) works much the same way: They become a bufferbetween what worries us or frightens us, and us. Basically, you will be using God(s) as a “human shield” or “meat shield”, between yourself and the scary things, so you can free your mind from the crippling influence of fear. Let Them deal with the scary stuff, so that you can run towards better things!

My favorite example of this in Norse Tradition is the story of Sigyn and Loki. Loki doesn’t really trust anyone or anything else, largely because He knows He Himself cannot be trusted. When He finally takes things way too far, and is finally punished by the Gods for His actions, He finds Himself enchained in the entrails of His own son, with a venom-dripping serpent positioned over His face. The pain of the dripping venom is agonizing: think of the acid-laced drool of the xenomorph in the Alien films. Only one person steps forth to provide a buffer between Loki and the steady drip of that poison: His wife, Sigyn. She holds a bowl or cup over Loki’s face, to catch the venom before it can hit Him square in the face. And He trusts Her to do it–to provide Him respite–because, really, He has no other choice. Sometimes, when it comes to dealing with fear in our own lives, we have no other choice, either, but to trust and rely on God(s). If we can learn to “hand off” our fears to Them, then we can eventually come to entirely live without fear.

A life without fear teaches us to expect, instead of dread. Once we can face life with exuberant expectancy, we will find ourselves going after life, rather than running away from it. Our minds are more free, when they are unencumbered by worry, fear, and doubt, which means we can actively accomplish more in our waking hours. Living life this way, slowly but surely, we can come to replace dread with hope.

I include the prayer below (in both a Heidhrinn and Christian version) to provide a starting point for building trust and reliance on God(s), towards an arrival at a life without fear. Feel free to use them, with or without personal embellishment.

Sigyn’s Shield
Hail Sigyn,
Mother Strong;
She Who stands between
Me and my fears:
Hold the cup,
And catch their poison;
Shield my face from their sting.
Teach me not only to endure,
But to rise above.
And when calm washes over me,
And peace again returns,
Let me turn my mind
To thank You,
And my heart toward love.
Blessed be.

Mary’s Shield
Hail Mary,
Mother Strong;
She Who stands between
Me and my fears:
Hold the cup,
And catch their poison;
Shield my face from their sting.
Teach me not only to endure,
But to rise above.
And when calm washes over me,
And peace again returns,
Let me turn my mind
To thank You,
And my heart toward love.
Amen.

Once we come to live without fear, we may then turn our minds towards inspiration and anticipation, which will be the topic of the next blog post in this series. I look forward to bringing that to you next week!

Digital artist journal page created by Connla Freyjason for Iaconagraphy, featuring digital elements from our Samsara set of digital assets, and original prayer poetry by Connla Freyjason. Some elements also from our Imramma set of digital assets. Samsara may be purchased by clicking on this image. (Link opens in a new tab)

Last week, we met the God of Green Hope, which I hope has greatly boosted not only your self-esteem, but also your self-confidence. You may remember from the first blog post in this series that confidence is one of the five keys to hope; today, we are going to talk about another important aspect of one of those keys: becoming fundamental.

This is our first step towards exploring the ultimate–the sacred–which may come as a surprise, because in our modern society we don’t tend to think of fundamental and ultimate as related concepts. In fact, we tend to think of them as direct opposites.

To our modern minds, ultimate has generally come to mean something bigger and better than us, while fundamental has come to mean basic, and not in a good way. When we think of something as fundamental here in our modern world, we tend to think of it as somehow “dumbed down”, which is never a good thing, right? At the same time that we sit around wishing for the “simple life”, we equate the simple with being basic, and the basic with being “dumbed down”. It’s no wonder, really, that we spend half our lives confused and in a rut!

The true definition of fundamental is anything but dumbed down:

Fundamental: serving as a basis supporting existence or determining essential structure or function; serving as an original or generating source; of central importance; essential; indispensable; a foundation without which an entire system or a complex whole would collapse.

From that definition, I hope that it is relatively apparent how the fundamental and the ultimate are actually inextricably woven together. The ultimate–the sacred, remember–also serves as a basis for existence, determining the essential structure and function of the Universe around us and serving as its generating source. In some ways, in fact, one might say that God(s) is (are) the fundamentalpersonified.

We may know who or what God(s) is/are. We may also not like Them very much at the moment because of the rough spot we’ve just come through. We are trying to crawl out of a faith rut, after all. It might be easier, therefore, to rebuild this portion of our “faith ladder” via a backdoor: the fundamental. But what is or are the fundamental(s)?

I’m going to do that thing many of you hate again, and throw another Bible verse at you.*

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. –Galatians 5:22

For those not coming here from a Christian background, the fruit of the Spirit might best be understood as the nine necessary attributes for a person to live in accord with the Universe, God(s), and other people: in other words, the fundamental(s). While nine are given in the verse, they can actually be simplified down to three:

You will find these threefundamentals echoed across almost all world religions, including Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Islam, and, yes, even Paganism. They effectively provide a “back door” through which God(s) enters the room, and we may come face to face with the ultimate.

For many people coming here from a Heathen background, the concept of love, joy, and peace as the three fundamentals necessary for making contact with the ultimate may seem sickeningly sweet; trite, even. They tend to brush up against the “rough warrior exterior” that so many like to paint in broad strokes across the face of our faith in an uncomfortable fashion. To those people, I would say three things: first, if that were truly all there was to our faith, many of us would have left it long ago. Second, have you met Freyr and Freyja? And third, try substituting each of those in the blanks in the following sentences and tell me if they still do not ring true:

_______________ supports my existence; without ________________, life would have no meaning. ________________ is the source of everything in the Universe. ___________________ is of central importance. Without ________________________, the entire Universe would collapse.

The sort of love we’re talking about here isn’t the icky, complicated human concept of love. Let’s face it, whether you want to get all fancy and call it agape or eros or what have you or not, somewhere somehow along the way, our limited concepts of love get us into complex and complicated situations that end with someone broken-hearted, disattached, and hurting. No, what I’m talking about with that one terribly-grafted-upon four letter word is concern for, enthusiasm, and devotion. Love is fundamental not because the Beatles sang songs about it, but because without concern for things, situations, and people in life, enthusiasm as we go about living it, and devotion to something bigger than us, life has no meaning and everything falls flat. Ultimately, love and respect are the same thing, and what we respect, we come to cherish: to hold in our minds and hearts constantly (as in, we’re thinking about them and considering them all the time) with esteem.

Concern and care are not synonyms, even though we treat them like they are. We can care too little, but we can also care too much. That is why when you look up the definition for the word care in the dictionary you get positive, good things within that definition like painstaking or watchful attention and regarding with esteem, but you also get profoundly negative, bad things like grief, anxiety, uncertainty, and apprehension. To be concerned is to be engaged: to relate to, to be involved with. There is no necessary emotion implied, as with caring. When we cease to be concerned, we disengage, and when we disengage, everything and everyone ceases to matter, and when nothing matters, everything sucks. When we lose concern, we also lose enthusiasm: we become unable to become excited, joyful, or happy about anything in life. And when we aren’t enthusiastic, it is impossible to be devoted to anyone or anything (to set anything or anyone apart as special or sacred; if nothing is ever special, life loses its luster fairly fast).

When we fall into a faith rut, we become disengaged in exactly the same way as if we had fallen down a well. At the bottom of a well, you’re all alone (hopefully, unless there are rats or spiders, of course, in which case you’ll soon be wishing you were all alone!). You are in a cold, dark place, disengaged from the rest of humanity. Chances are, you’ll soon be hoping that you could re-engage, likely at the end of a rope tossed down by some would-be rescuer. But how do you trust that would-be rescuer enough to grab onto that rope and climb up those slippery walls back out into the light, without having to fear that they will let go of the rope? You have to engage with yourself before you can do so with anyone else: you can never grab onto that rope if you’re so busy freaking out over your present condition that you never even notice that it’s there in the first place, and you will never have the courage to grab onto the rope once you do notice it if you constantly fear that your would-be rescuer is going to let go. This is why, in the last blog post, we re-engaged with ourselves, via meeting the God of Green Hope within. To experience love, much less to spreadlove, you must first love yourself.

Meeting the God of Green Hope also helped us to restore joy and peace in our lives (hopefully), so now we have the building blocks in place to take our journey deeper and reach out towards the ultimate.

We are going to begin that reaching out through prayer. Prayerdoes not need to be conflated, or composed of poetic phrasing; on the contrary, I have found in my own personal experience that my most profound experiences with prayer consisted of conversations very much like those one might have when initially making contact with another living-breathing human:

“Hi, Freyja? Yeah, this is Connla. Are you hearing me okay? I just wanted to call you up and tell you how much I appreciate having you in my life….”

Or:

“Hello, Hella? This is Connla. I’ve noticed you being around in my life a lot lately, and I just thought I’d let you know that I know that you’re there….”

Because the entire purpose of this blog series is to attempt to climb out of a faith rut, your God-conversations (aka prayers) should probably focus right now on asking for help in doing that. To make your life a bit easier, I’ve taken the liberty of including a suggested prayer below (a Heidhrinn and a Christian version). Feel free to use them, with or without personal embellishment.

Climbing Prayer (Heidhrinn)
Hail, Freyr,
Lord of Light!
Help me to love me
As You love me.
Show me my strength,
When I feel I have none.
Teach me the joy
Of sun upon the wheat;
Of mead in the cup,
And of birds on the wind.
Grant peace and good seasons in my life;
Peace and good seasons in the lives
Of those whom I hold dear.
And when my cup is empty,
Let me trust in You to refill it:
For You are my Brother,
And my Friend.
Blessed be.

Climbing Prayer (Christian)
O, My Christ,
Lord of Light!
Help me to love me
As You love me.
Show me my strength,
When I feel I have none.
Teach me the joy
Of sun upon the wheat;
Of mead in the cup,
And of birds on the wind.
Grant peace and good seasons in my life;
Peace and good seasons in the lives
Of those whom I hold dear.
And when my cup is empty,
Let me trust in You to refill it:
For You are my Brother,
And my Friend.
Amen.

Reaching out to the ultimate is your first brave step towards coming to rely on something greater than yourself: the first true building block of a returning faith. I hope you’re feeling hopeful right now; I know I am! In my next blog post, we’ll talk about how to use that reliance and trust to begin living without fear. I look forward to our time together next week!

*(As an aside, I’d like to note that the Bible is a book, just like the likely plethora of books sitting over there, across the room from you on your bookshelf. To discount it as a valid source of wisdom, based on experiences with others who have beaten you over the head with it, is as arbitrary–and discriminatory–as dismissing the Qu’ran purely because you have some sort of personal issue with Muslims. The book itself hasn’t done anything to you: it can’t; it’s an inanimate object. It’s just a book. It’s also a magnificent work of literature, so if you’re down with quoting Byron, Eliot, Tolkien, or Poe–who were all Christians–taking issue with the Bible is hypocritical, at best.)

Digital artist journal page by Connla Freyjason for Iaconagraphy, using our upcoming ArtLife set of digital assets, by Frances and Connla.

May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your spiritual life, filled with the life-giving energy of inspiration, will brim over with hope!

I began my arduous search for the God of green hope in February of 2016, following the realization that I had become hopeless. Clearly, Jesus wasn’t “that guy”, because He and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms by that point. Lleu Llaw Gyffes wasn’t “that guy”, either, even though I had considered myself a practicing Druid for a number of years previously. So I began my dive into the Norse Tradition, in hopes of finding “that guy” there.

I had been a “weekend Druid”, but I was anything but a “weekend Heathen”. From the very start, my journey down the Norse Path led me to daily prayer, weekly blots, and active participation in my newfound Faith. By June of 2016, I had finally begun to “feel better”, but I still hadn’t fully recovered my hope, nor had I met the God of Green Hope. A year on, in February of 2017, I still had not found Him/Her/It, and those feelings of quiet desperation began to slowly seep back in, this time compounded by my inability to figure out the “riddle” within that verse that I had been given.

The truth of it was this: I couldn’t find the God of Green Hope because I was looking in all the wrong places. I was looking outside, when I should have been looking within.

I am the God of Green Hope. You are the God of Green Hope. We are the God of Green Hope.

I automatically hold anyone suspect who says in a serious tone that they are the god of anything. Sure, people may jokingly say things like “I am the god of homemade tacos”, and I’m perfectly fine with that, because it’s a joke. But to claim godhood for oneself smacks of a brand of pretentiousness that I have a difficult time fathoming. It’s part of why I take issue with the writings of Aleister Crowley. Yet, hear me out.

For a full year, I prayed, participated in rituals, researched, and searched, trying to find that one, great, outside source that would fill me up with joy and fill me up with peace as that passage promised. A full year, and yet I still felt that I was hanging on the tree. I looked outside, and outside, and outside, but only on the rarest of occasions did I look within. And even when I did, my focus was on where I fit into our business, rather than on where I fit into the World.

In March of 2017, I finally looked inside. The business was tanking yet again, and as I sat in my office literally crying, it finally dawned on me that doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results is the very definition of insanity. So I decided to do something different: instead of shaking my fist at the heavens, I took a deep, long look within. And I discovered something I definitely didn’t want to discover: I was the problem. The good news was, if I was the problem, I could also be the solution.

Becoming the God of Green Hope:

Stop looking back; you aren’t going that way!

Mistakes and triumphs you’ve experienced in the past are precisely that: in the past. The longer you dwell on either, the more they are allowed to control your present, which in turn leads them to shape your future. Do you want a future shaped by your past mistakes and triumphs, or do you want a future shaped by you, yourself?

Stop mourning, and start celebrating!

Stop mourning all of the things you don’t have, haven’t accomplished, or didn’t do, and instead focus on celebrating what you do have, are accomplishing, and are doing via showing gratitude. You’re likely great at sitting down and making detailed inventories of things to mourn; take that skill, and instead turn it towards making a detailed inventory of all the things about your life that are actually good. These don’t have to be big things! Things for which to be grateful can be as seemingly insignificant as a shockingly blue sky outside your window, or as mindblowing as having your art published on the cover of a popular newsletter or magazine.

While you’re making lists, make one of everything that worries you right now. Read through it, and then discard it, and actually let go.

Worrying is basically looking towards the future with dread, instead of looking towards the future with eager expectancy. We all do it, and we all have done it, and even after you make this list, discard it, and make a conscious decision to let go of those specific worries, the chances are fantastic you will find a whole new list of things to worry about at some point in the future. When that happens, you should repeat this exercise. Worrying is a useless endeavor: all it does is leave you feeling defeated, and make you tired. It actually accomplishes nothing, so why keep doing it?

Rediscover joy.

The marrow of what we really want out of life is locked inside the bones of those things which bring us joy. Make a third list: a list of everything in your life, no matter how big or small, that actually sparks joy in you. In case it’s been so long that you’ve forgotten what joy even feels like, these would be things that create a sense of well-being for you; things that make you feel successful or fortunate; things that make you deeply happy or cause you to brim with delight. Your gratitude list might be a helpful jump-off point for creating this list. Once you have your list, take some time to actually spend time with these joy-sparkers.

Realize that you are enough.

Re-engage with yourself. The first question too many of us ask when attempting to “find ourselves” is “am I worthy?” That is an adversarial tone, and we all know what such a tone gets us when we’re talking about exterior human relationships, right? So why do we think it will go differently with interior ones? Think about it like this: let’s say you’ve just met a new person with whom you’re considering building a friendship. What would happen if, upon first meeting them, you introduced yourself by saying “I’m me, and I’m wondering if you’re worthy of being my friend”? That likely wouldn’t go over terribly well, now, would it? They would likely find you rude and pretentious, and they wouldn’t be wrong. So why do we approach our selves that way? The simple answer: we shouldn’t. Enough means “occurring in such a quantity, quality, or scope as to fully meet demands, needs, or expectations.” If you are enough, that means that you are capable of meeting whatever life throws at you halfway. Look around at your life: you’ve made it this far. You’re still breathing; you’re still sitting here reading this. If you’ve made it this far, that is empirical proof that you are enough, and enough is the first important step towards plenty: a large or sufficient amount or quality; more than enough.

Once you have found the God of Green Hope within you, you should start experiencing more joy and peace in your life. You may find that you need to do these exercises multiple times–I certainly did–and there’s no shame in that. Don’t worry if you don’t immediately feel as though you have been filled up with joy and peace; that will come with time. This is just the beginning, and we’ll discuss where to go from here in the next blog post in this series.